2,330 research outputs found
Sparse component separation for accurate CMB map estimation
The Cosmological Microwave Background (CMB) is of premier importance for the
cosmologists to study the birth of our universe. Unfortunately, most CMB
experiments such as COBE, WMAP or Planck do not provide a direct measure of the
cosmological signal; CMB is mixed up with galactic foregrounds and point
sources. For the sake of scientific exploitation, measuring the CMB requires
extracting several different astrophysical components (CMB, Sunyaev-Zel'dovich
clusters, galactic dust) form multi-wavelength observations. Mathematically
speaking, the problem of disentangling the CMB map from the galactic
foregrounds amounts to a component or source separation problem. In the field
of CMB studies, a very large range of source separation methods have been
applied which all differ from each other in the way they model the data and the
criteria they rely on to separate components. Two main difficulties are i) the
instrument's beam varies across frequencies and ii) the emission laws of most
astrophysical components vary across pixels. This paper aims at introducing a
very accurate modeling of CMB data, based on sparsity, accounting for beams
variability across frequencies as well as spatial variations of the components'
spectral characteristics. Based on this new sparse modeling of the data, a
sparsity-based component separation method coined Local-Generalized
Morphological Component Analysis (L-GMCA) is described. Extensive numerical
experiments have been carried out with simulated Planck data. These experiments
show the high efficiency of the proposed component separation methods to
estimate a clean CMB map with a very low foreground contamination, which makes
L-GMCA of prime interest for CMB studies.Comment: submitted to A&
QCD thermodynamics with nonzero chemical potential at and effects from heavy quarks
We extend our work on QCD thermodynamics with 2+1 quark flavors at nonzero
chemical potential to finer lattices with . We study the equation of
state and other thermodynamic quantities, such as quark number densities and
susceptibilities, and compare them with our previous results at . We
also calculate the effects of the addition of the charm and bottom quarks on
the equation of state at zero and nonzero chemical potential. These effects are
important for cosmological studies of the early Universe.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figures. Some small text and figure change
Gamma-D crystallin gene (CRYGD) mutation causes autosomal dominant congenital cerulean cataracts
Congenital cataracts are a major cause of bilateral visual impairment in childhood. We mapped the gene responsible for autosomal congenital cerulean cataracts to chromosome 2q33-35 in a four generation family of Moroccan descent. The maximum lod score (7.19 at recombination fraction theta=0) was obtained for marker D2S2208 near the g-crystallin gene (CRYG) cluster. Sequencing of the coding regions of the CRYGA, B, C, and D genes showed the presence of a heterozygous C>A transversion in exon 2 of CRYGD that is associated with cataracts in this family. This mutation resulted in a proline to threonine substitution at amino acid 23 of the protein in the first of the four Greek key motifs that characterise this protein. We show that although the x ray crystallography modelling does not indicate any change of the backbone conformation, the mutation affects a region of the Greek key motif that is important for determining the topology of this protein fold. Our data suggest strongly that the proline to threonine substitution may alter the protein folding or decrease the thermodynamic stability or solubility of the protein. Furthermore, this is the first report of a mutation in this gene resulting in autosomal dominant congenital cerulean cataracts
A Novel Enediynyl Peptide Inhibitor of Furin That Blocks Processing of proPDGF-A, B and proVEGF-C
BACKGROUND: Furin represents a crucial member of secretory mammalian subtilase, the Proprotein Convertase (PC) or Proprotein Convertase Subtilisin/Kexin (PCSK) superfamily. It has been linked to cancer, tumorgenesis, viral and bacterial pathogenesis. As a result it is considered a major target for intervention of these diseases. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Herein, we report, for the first time, the synthesis and biological evaluation of a newly designed potent furin inhibitor that contains a highly reactive beta-turn inducing and radical generating "enediynyl amino acid" (Eda) moiety. "Eda" was inserted between P1 and P1' residues of hfurin(98-112) peptide, derived from the primary cleavage site of furin's own prodomain. The resulting hexadecapeptide derivative inhibited furin in vitro with IC(50) approximately 40 nM when measured against the fluorogenic substrate Boc-RVRR-MCA. It also inhibited furin-mediated cleavage of a fluorogenic peptide derived from hSARS-CoV spike protein with IC(50) approximately 193 nM. Additionally it also blocked furin-processing of growth factors proPDGF-A, B and VEGF-C that are linked to tumor genesis and cancer. Circular dichroism study showed that this inhibitor displayed a predominantly beta-turn structure while western blots confirmed its ability to protect furin protein from self degradation. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: These findings imply its potential as a therapeutic agent for intervention of cancer and other furin-associated diseases
Up and Down Quark Masses and Corrections to Dashen's Theorem from Lattice QCD and Quenched QED
In a previous letter (arXiv:1306.2287) we determined the isospin mass
splittings of the baryon octet from a lattice calculation based on quenched QED
and QCD simulations with 5 lattice spacings down to
, lattice sizes up to and average up-down
quark masses all the way down to their physical value. Using the same data we
determine here the corrections to Dashen's theorem and the individual up and
down quark masses. For the parameter which quantifies violations to Dashens's
theorem, we obtain , where the first error is
statistical, the second is systematic, and the third is an estimate of the QED
quenching error. For the light quark masses we obtain,
and in the
scheme at and the isospin breaking ratios
, and
. Our results exclude the solution to the strong
CP problem by more than standard deviations
WMAP 9-year CMB estimation using sparsity
Recovering the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from WMAP data requires
galactic foreground emissions to be accurately separated out. Most component
separation techniques rely on second order statistics such as Internal Linear
Combination (ILC) techniques. In this paper, we present a new WMAP 9-year CMB
map, with 15 arcmin resolution, which is reconstructed using a recently
introduced sparse component separation technique, coined Local Generalized
Morphological Component Analysis (LGMCA). LGMCA emphasizes on the sparsity of
the components to be retrieved in the wavelet domain. We show that although
derived from a radically different separation criterion ({i.e. sparsity), the
LGMCA-WMAP 9 map and its power spectrum are fully consistent with their more
recent estimates from WMAP 9.Comment: Submitted to A&A (revised
Clebsch-Gordan Construction of Lattice Interpolating Fields for Excited Baryons
Large sets of baryon interpolating field operators are developed for use in
lattice QCD studies of baryons with zero momentum. Operators are classified
according to the double-valued irreducible representations of the octahedral
group. At first, three-quark smeared, local operators are constructed for each
isospin and strangeness and they are classified according to their symmetry
with respect to exchange of Dirac indices. Nonlocal baryon operators are
formulated in a second step as direct products of the spinor structures of
smeared, local operators together with gauge-covariant lattice displacements of
one or more of the smeared quark fields. Linear combinations of direct products
of spinorial and spatial irreducible representations are then formed with
appropriate Clebsch-Gordan coefficients of the octahedral group. The
construction attempts to maintain maximal overlap with the continuum SU(2)
group in order to provide a physically interpretable basis. Nonlocal operators
provide direct couplings to states that have nonzero orbital angular momentum.Comment: This manuscript provides an anlytical construction of operators and
is related to hep-lat/0506029, which provides a computational construction.
This e-print version contains a full set of Clebsch-Gordan coefficients for
the octahedral grou
Finite-volume effects and the electromagnetic contributions to kaon and pion masses
We report on the MILC Collaboration calculation of electromagnetic effects on
light pseudoscalar mesons. The simulations employ asqtad staggered dynamical
quarks in QCD plus quenched photons, with lattice spacings varying from 0.12 to
0.06 fm. Finite volume corrections for the MILC realization of lattice
electrodynamics have been calculated in chiral perturbation theory and applied
to the lattice data. These corrections differ from those calculated by Hayakawa
and Uno because our treatment of zero modes differs from theirs. Updated
results for the corrections to "Dashen's theorem" are presented.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Presented at Lattice 2014, Columbia University,
June 23-28, 201
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Development of Metabolic Indicators of Burn Injury: Very Low Density Lipoprotein (VLDL) and Acetoacetate Are Highly Correlated to Severity of Burn Injury in Rats
Hypermetabolism is a significant sequela to severe trauma such as burns, as well as critical illnesses such as cancer. It persists in parallel to, or beyond, the original pathology for many months as an often-fatal comorbidity. Currently, diagnosis is based solely on clinical observations of increased energy expenditure, severe muscle wasting and progressive organ dysfunction. In order to identify the minimum number of necessary variables, and to develop a rat model of burn injury-induced hypermetabolism, we utilized data mining approaches to identify the metabolic variables that strongly correlate to the severity of injury. A clustering-based algorithm was introduced into a regression model of the extent of burn injury. As a result, a neural network model which employs VLDL and acetoacetate levels was demonstrated to predict the extent of burn injury with 88% accuracy in the rat model. The physiological importance of the identified variables in the context of hypermetabolism, and necessary steps in extension of this preliminary model to a clinically utilizable index of severity of burn injury are outlined
Processing of Ti50Nb50-xHAx composites by rapid microwave sintering technique for biomedical applications
The main objective of this research is to fabricate porous mechanical-tuned (low elastic modulus and high strength) Ti-based composites with improved bioactivity for orthopaedic applications. Another objective is to demonstrate the potential of microwave sintering and temporary space alloying technique to synthesize porous Ti-based composites. In this study, porous Ti50Nb50−xHAx (x = 0, 10 and 20) composite was fabricated for orthopaedic applications using a powder metallurgical and rapid microwave sintering (PM-RMS) process. Effects of key PM-RMS parameters on the structural porosity, compressive strength, and elastic modulus of built composite were then analysed. The microstructure, pore characteristics, and mechanical properties were investigated in detail. Using high hydroxyapatite (HA) content (20%), short sintering time (5 min), and high compacting pressure (200 MPa) appears to be the best condition among those studied in terms of yielding a high degree of structural porosity (21%) and low elastic modulus (25 GPa) in the sintered composite. Since size of pores in the synthesized composite is in the range of 20–30 μm, structural porosity not only reduces elastic modulus but also enhances bio-activity of sintered composite. The combination of highly porous structure, low elastic modulus, high compressive strength, improved corrosion resistance, and enhanced bioactivity makes porous Ti-Nb-HA composites fabricated by microwave sintering process potential and promising candidates for orthopedic applications
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